Echoing what his fellow congressional colleagues, Reps. Carlos Gimenez (R) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R), have been saying that Rep. Byron Donalds (R) asserted his belief that regime change in Communist Cuba needs to occur.
“I believe there needs to be full-scale regime change in Cuba,” said Rep. Donalds during a meeting on Meet the Press. “[Díaz-Canel] is a dictator who wants to have the same deal as the Castro brothers. He wants to be able to rule Cuba with an iron fist and die in office.”
Rep. Donalds added, “What the American people need to understand is that Cuba, for 67 years, has been a Communist dictatorship. They have suppressed the free speech of the Cuban people. The Cuban people today are rationing food. Their economy is flat on their back.”
“For what Díaz-Canel was saying, that there don’t have to be any changes for Cuban to be better, is a lie,” Donalds continued. “If you examine the history of governments around the world, free and open societies like America, that is where people actually thrive, succeed, and excel.”
“I think it’s important for everybody to listen to his words. He would rather continue to suppress the people of Cuba, to the point where they have to ration food, to the point where political opposition is jail, where there is no free press, no ability to communicate, and he believes that’s worth dying for? I think that says all that needs to be said,” Donalds concluded.
Hours after the Trump Administration implemented "Operation Midnight Hammer" to capture Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro, President Donald Trump address the media from his Mar-A-Lago home about possibly shifting his crosshairs to the Cuban regime.
"Cuba is not doing very well right now. That system is not been a very good one for Cuba, the people there have suffered for many many years and I think Cuba is going to be something we'll end up talking about because Cuba is a failing nation right now, very badly failing nation and we want to help the people get very similar in the sense that we want to help the people in Cuba but we want to also helped the people that were forced out of Cuba and living in this country," said President Trump.
During the same press conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio opined that the Cuban regime should be, which very "concerned" about what happened to Maduro, insinuating that Cuba leaders could also be targeted for arrest, or worse.
"One of the biggest problems Venezuelans have is that they have to declare independence from Cuba that tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint," said Secretary Rubio. "Yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned at least."
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel responded to the Trump administration's ongoing economic embargo of the island, saying that if President Trump decided to overthrow his regime using military force, he and his military were ready to "die" in defense of their cause.
“If that happens, there will be fighting, and there will be a struggle, and we will defend ourselves, and if we need to die, we’ll die, because as our national anthem says, ‘Dying for the homeland is to live,’” the Cuban president said.
